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The Bore-Gush Race
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 Jaal's visiting Florida correspondent has sent this urgent despatch:As soon as I landed in Miami, I faced the tough situation of finding no vacancy in any hotel. I was, however, lucky to run into a familiar face and I was not surprised that he was now a Minister in an Indian State. Which? The reader should be able to figure that one out. The Minister told me he happened to be in Florida to undergo specialised surgery for his chronic sinus problem. Having arrived, he said, he was surprised at all the hullabaloo of the presidential election. Instead of my grilling him, he asked me a direct question: Do you think all this noise is justified? Is all this not a waste of public money, he asked. I have tried hard in this despatch to carefully remove every trace of each unprintable expletive he used to attribute to the pusillanimous political leadership of all the parties. He brushed aside my weak explanation that there were only two major parties in the sunrise country. After pushing in an enormous paan into his cavernous mouth and drenching my notebook with beetlejuice, he said that the situation should have been handled differently. Again, I told him that our own swadeshi MS Gill had said the very same thing. He looked at me and said contemptuously, "We are not on the same wavelength". He added that what he meant was if one ballot box was missing in the first count, it should have continued to have remained missing. "How can we afford to have missing boxes popping up here and there to spoil a hard-earned victory?' he ejaculated. He was also not happy with the polling personnel in Florida who wanted to count every ballot again. "And", he demanded from me, "why no action was taken by the parties to capture booths? After all, they were set up in all odd places and it was not even child's play to capture them and then vote according to one's conscience" He reminisced over how many booths he had captured in his native State in his long and distinguished political career. He was very hopeful his career would be facilitated by the sinus operation he was lucky to have in Miami. He frowned upon the statement from Reformist Pat Buchanan that the ballot might have been defective and he might have had some votes that did not really belong to him and he was not feeling happy about those circumstances. Our minister felt that if you have such politicians how can you conduct successful elections. He asked me again, "Do we not strive to have all the votes that do not really belong to us?" Turning philosophical, he said, he would not have won a single election if he followed the Buchanan formula. Our Minister was singularly upset over the bad example that the Americans were setting for democracy. Pretty soon, he felt, the virus would spread and even people in India would start expecting fair polls and accountability in electoral practices. Recalling how we Indians always blamed such unfortunate incidents on either the CIA or the KGB, he asked why no candidate or his distinguished campaign manager has not so far blamed this episode of electoral farce on Osama bin Laden. He reminded me, as if a reminder was needed, that we do not do things like this in our bi....er... Bharat. RECENTLY ON JAAL: Hack Attack! Eee! Governance! Justice Unbound Small States, Large Stakes Con Banega Crorepati Salesman No. 1 Cat And Meows 25 Years After Paswan Goes DOTty Child's Play Toilet Paper Drought And About Boer Boar The Joke's On You The Coming Of Bill SEND US YOUR FEEDBACK ABOUT THIS ARTICLE: ?
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